Lunacy
by Nightmare Asylum
Summary: If Bella had a personality, and Edward didn't hightail it to Alaska after Biology - how would the story go? The full moon has been said to cause more lunacy than this.
1. First Sight

Lunacy

Chapter One

First Sight

I'll be the first to admit that school is normally a terrible, boring thing, but my first day in the Forks high school was downright strange. I kind of lived under a rock back in phoenix (or, more accurately on TV Tropes) but I was pretty sure that the massive amount of attention I was getting was odd. Sure, it was a smaller town but the reaction still seemed disproportionate. Mike was helpful, and Tyler was actually pretty funny. Jessica seemed nice, but part of the popular crowd, not something I was used to being a part of. At my old school I was pretty much a chunk of tofu, making small talk with whoever I came in contact with and being generally agreeable.

The fact that most of my friends were books didn't bother me. Anyway, I digress. I was talking about Jess (as she prefers to be called). Jess is popular and nice, but a bit… well, not ditzy. I think oblivious might be a better fit. Not that I'm one to talk. I'm pretty much late to every bandwagon there is. Angela seemed to be more of the type of person I could hang out with. She was quiet, but nice and pretty motivated. Lauren, another blonde who joined us for lunch, seemed a little catty but it didn't really bother me. If she stayed out of my hair, I'd stay out of hers.

"Oh my god here he comes," Jess gasped dreamily.

I looked up and spotted Mike walking coolly across the floor toward our table. I snorted inelegantly and tried not to laugh. This earned me a glare from Jess.

"What's so funny, Bella?"

"I just had an imagination spot of Mike making a duck face while he walked in slow motion with an inexplicable wind blowing through his hair – like… have you even seen Mean Girls?"

Angela, who had been squinting at Mike as I talked gave a deep throated laugh I wouldn't have expected of her. "Oh god, I can totally see that."

Apparently Jess got the picture in her head as well. By the time Mike sat down we were lost in helpless giggles. It wasn't even that funny – the laughter just kept feeding on itself. It was as I was about to make a (probably inappropriate) comment about zombies (don't ask) that I spotted a group of people better suited for a clothing catalogue than a high school. They didn't even look to be quite the right age to be attending.

After staring at them for several curious minutes, the smallest boy at the table suddenly turned as if his name had been called, and met my gaze. His eyes were very black, and his hair was a rather messy copper color – not quite dark enough to be red.

_Gingers have no souls._ I snorted again and tried to keep from laughing at the boy (_man? he's rather too old to be a boy seeing as he's a junior but not old enough to be a man… food for thought_)and slowly drifted off to look elsewhere in the cafeteria as I pondered where the gingers joke came from. My own hair was a weird reddish brown so I really didn't have the right to make ginger jokes.

I groaned along with Mike when the bell rang, signifying the start end of lunch. I didn't want to go to biology. My best classes were more slanted for English. Science was boring, I'd never need to use it, and, on top of that, I hated it. I entered the classroom last (somehow or another I'd read the map wrong and ended up in the wrong building – thank god for Mike) and drifted over to the only available seat – which so happened to be next to the boy from the cafeteria.

He flinched violently before I could sit down, eyes going huge before narrowing in utter hatred. I stopped dead in the middle of sitting down, legs cramping with strain (note to self: ask Charlie if he still has the exerbike). The redhead finally broke eye contact and sat as far away from me as possible. I took this as a signal to sit, and did so just as the teacher entered the class.

Note taking.

Call me lax, but I never took notes. Instead I stared out the window at the endless green, doing my best to ignore the tense shape of the boy next to me and wondering if I could get away with reading _Rose Madder_ while the teacher directed the class. I eventually came to the conclusion that no, I could not (the book was too hard to disguise inside the text book, and my neck already hurt from hiding it under the desk in my previous class).

Time passed, I day dreamed, and about twenty minutes before the end of the class, the teacher had to leave the room to discuss grades with a student. The rest of the class began talking quietly, so I decided to try and pierce the impenetrable force field around my lab partner.

"My name's Bella Swan – of no relation to the pirate king. I don't know your name though."

I waited politely. Kill 'em with kindness, as my mother always said. I was pissed at my partner or anything – merely curious. Although I did have major passive aggressive tendencies for when I was angry.

"Edward Cullen," he breathed, as if trying to avoid taking in any air.

"Huh. Can't say I've met anyone named Edward before. Not common now a days, though it seems common with comic book characters. Done any ritual sacrifice lately?"

I laughed nervously. "Whoops. Word vomit. I need to learn to have a filter."

Edward only stared at me with a neutral expression, though his eyes still seemed oddly… bestial? I wasn't sure what, but the way he was looking at me was doing very inappropriate things.

I blame the internet for my feelings.

Anyway, the teacher came back in and dismissed us soon after. Edward was out of the room faster than a speeding bullet but I was happy to get the hell out of school.

"What, did you stab Cullen with a pencil or something?"

I frowned and pondered this. "Huh. Did seem like he was in pain…. Oh! I didn't actually, but that might've been funny."

"Sadist, are we?"

"Well, maybe a little. But have you ever seen AMV? Everyone's a little bit sadist."

Mike nodded. "You have a point."

"And you have several," I replied, meaning his hair.

I talked with mike about the school – thanked him for his help and climbed into the monstrous old Truck Charlie had given me as a present. I made it home without incident and dashed inside through a sudden cloud burst. Charlie still wasn't home (he probably had a ton of paper work to file seeing as he'd taken my day of arrival off to catch up) so I pulled some fish from the freezer and some potatoes from the cupboard along with all the little trimmings and fixings and got started on making my own rendition of fish and chips. I'd been craving it for a while, and we had a lot of fish to go through.

It's a good thing I like (and even prefer) fish.

"Hello darkness my dear friend~ something something here agaaain. Lalala something some some thiiiing," I sang (terribly) as a worked, hoping to get rid of my earworm without seeking out the song itself.

Unfortunately the song was enough of a distraction that I managed to slice open my finger while trying to peel a potato.

"Motherf- ACK! "

Something hit me hard. I landed on the linoleum floor, felt a hand roughly grip my hair – the lights winked out. A hard, heavy body dropped onto of me, and stabbed up at it with the knife I still held, only for it to bounce off something rock hard with a grating metallic sound – I ended up cutting myself again.

Flailing, I opened my mouth to scream bloody murder only to have something – cloth – shoved between my teeth. All I could do was make muffled shrieks as I felt the icy weight on top of me press closer – someone inhaled deeply and there was a swift, burning streak of pain in my neck. I gagged on the cloth in my throat and cried for my dad to rescue me as my hands were pinned and the pain started to grow – creeping through me even as my body became unresponsive and light.

I felt dizzy. Bursts of color went off in front of my eyes as I felt something _pull_

And then there was a crash and my attacker was no longer on top of me.

"No!"

Voices. Arguing. A name.

Pain.

_Authors Note_

_I blame the 'If I wrote Twilight' meme on dA for this. If you folks like this, I'll probably continue. Forgive inconsistencies with character description – its been a while since I read the books. This is a twilight written if Bella had a personality. She does, and I'm going for cloudcuckoolander – that's a trope. Anyway, when/if we get there you can vote on the pairing. Please review. _


	2. Ten of Swords

Lunacy

Chapter Two

Ten of Swords

Far away from my tiny world of pain, the real world moved on. My father, Charlie, was tied up at the station looking at a series of deaths that were either the result of a wild animal… or ritual sacrifice. It wasn't every day that a small town cop came across something so gruesome, and Chief Swan wasn't about to sound the alarm and call in the state police unless he was a hundred per cent sure it was a serial killer he was going after.

Small town, dark secret. And we weren't even in Maine.

When my father made it home well after the time he thought it would, he opened the front door to the smell of smoke. On instinct his hand touched the butt of his gun as he darted down the short entry hall and into the kitchen. First he saw the grayish potatoes on the counter, then the charred fish still cooking in the pan. He tossed the pan into the sink – it was a miracle nothing was burning! – and called out my name.

I didn't answer – I couldn't.

Charlie was going to check my room when he spotted my blood on the counter. He followed the drips of it to a smear of brown on the linoleum under the window. Blood.

A lot of blood.

My father called in for backup, and ran shouting through the house.

Funny how I had to move to a small, safe town to be murdered.

O

The time I spent in the fire pit – it was agony – like being roasted on a spit in hell while little devils giggled at your hoarse begging screams. It was the kind of pain that made you beg for death, the sort that made you promise everything, from your virginity to your _soul_ to your first born child if only it would stop. Of course pain can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. You can only bear it and keep on bearing it passed the point of sanity.

I'll spare you further details

O

When the burning began to recede I was overjoyed – and when it was gone I was stunned speechless. I stared at the world open to me and found myself even more easily distracted than usual. _ Way_ more distracted than usual. I was caught up in staring at the dust motes swirling through a beam of light. They were golden and even more lovely than the last time I'd spotted them.

"Ms. Swan?"

My head whipped around – the room didn't even blur! – and I saw a tall blonde who could be pushing thirty – if I was generous. It was probably his strangely golden eyes that made him look older than the rest of his body. Subtle ways in which he held himself revealed age too.

"Where am I?"

The memory of pain came shooting back and I winced at the mere thought of it. It was on a whole new level.

"And what happened? Why did… who attacked me?"

My heart should have been beating hard, but it wasn't. I clutched at my chest, trying to feel for a beat. There wasn't one. It felt like there was a growing pit of ice in my stomach. It felt like I was choking on a throat full of coal. I made a strange gagging sound and wanted to hyperventilate.

_No. no. no. no. no. no. no. no. not possible. Not fucking possible, Bells! This isn't a comic book or a movie! People don't just walk around without a heart beat! Magic doesn't exist, you've accepted and gone through that phase! _

"Ms. Swan?"

I turned to look back at the man in wide eyed horror while my traitorous brain flipped through every possible monster or magic that could cause a being to function without a heartbeat.

_Zombie – no I'm capable of rational thought – werewolf – obviously not. Frankenstein is another form of zombie and I'm pretty sure he had a heart beat in Marie Shelley's book. Homunculus? Nope. Nothing to do with alchemy. Lich? Well screw that I'm not a sorcerer! Maybe someone here is a necromancer? Who knows. Okay. Vampire? Well, it looks to be day time and I'm not feeling compelled to sleep, theres a mirror over there. Clearly I have a reflection. Okay. What about Fae? DID I PISS OFF A FAERIE? Oh good god. Wait! Maybe I am a zombie, but a mutated one who can think! _

"I blame Cthullu," I blurted out.

The man blinked, looking rather surprised. "What?"

"For all this –" I gestured at my body. "I went through every supernatural creature I can think of and I'm not rotting so it can't be zombie, even a mutated rage virus type zombie thing, so I blame the elder gods."

I narrowed my eyes up at the ceiling. The bastards.

"Ah," the man let out a startled laugh. "Actually, Ms. Swan you are a Vampire."

I stared at him and noted how, while the icy feeling had vanished, the burning coals in my throat had not. I also made not of the fact that I had neither shared blood nor been bitten during the full moon. So clearly some of the vampire mythos was utterly in the wrong. Oh yeah. I also wasn't sleeping and most books made it out so the vampire bite was an orgasmic thing. Oh what a field day Freud would have.

"Oh. That explains the burning in my throat."

I realized I was still lying down (on a rather nice sofa actually) and sat up fully. "I think I need a crash course in what real vampires do."

"Well, first you may want to hunt. You must be dying of thirst."

The feeling in my throat flared up so much it seemed to reach my nose. It was similar to the sensation of getting chlorine water in your nose, but about twenty times stronger. "_Can _I die of thirst?"

"Well no," the man said. "I don't think so anyway. I went a very long time without drinking when I was first… born and I was far from dying. Albeit extremely uncomfortable and probably not completely sane."

I nodded, filing that tidbit away for future reference when something else struck me.

"This isn't going to be like Interview with a Vampire, right? Because I'm probably gonna pull a Luis and just 'eat' rats."

The thought of killing anyone made my stomach turn. I had way too much… well, something to ever be able to kill and eat something sentient. Hannibal Lecter I was not.

The man smiled at me, and it seemed very pleased with my announcement. "That sentiment will help you greatly when you start to hunt. My family do not hunt and kill people. We drink the blood of animals."

"Then who attacked me?"

The man looked pained, and I was starting to wish I had a name to call him by.

"My... son. Edward. He attacked you."

I tilted my head to the side, curiously. "He stopped before he killed me though."

There wasn't anything I could do about the whole vampire thing now. And – wait. "Edward as in the Edward in biology?"

I realized he probably wouldn't know what I meant.

"Yes."

Okay, apparently he did.

"You were his singer. You see all blood smells different to us. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but is the case. Some blood, however, is far more tempting than any other, sometimes for only one vampire, sometimes to vampires as a whole. It's very rare for this to happen and it was my Son's first experience with a 'singer'."

I nodded. "So its kinda like food preference on a more… addictive level?"

"Yes, and to be honest, Ms. Swan I'm shocked your able to talk to me the way you are. You shouldn't be this rational."

"Maybe I'm in shock. To be honest I'm still waiting for the punch line. Or maybe to wake up in the hospital. Or heaven. Part of me is thinking I already am in heaven, but it's 'What Dreams May Come' style. Oh! Right. What's your name? I keep referring to you as 'the man' in my head and, well, you seem to know my name."

"Dr. Carlisle Cullen."

"Oh. Well, now that I think about it you do kinda look like a doctor to me."

Dr. Cullen smiled. "Thank you Ms. Swan."

"Bella, please. Um. So. Are you going to kick me out or let me stay?"

I was suddenly feeling a bit of fear. I really, _really_ didn't want to be on my own, especially now that I'd made a whole species jump!

"You are free to leave if you wish, but I would be happy to welcome you to the family."

Before I had the chance to answer, the doors to the room I was in opened and the group of clothing catalogue people from the cafeteria came flooding in.

….

AN

_And this is chapter two! I hope any (presumed) readers liked this. I'm mostly writing this for my own enjoyment, I'll admit, however I really would appreciate reviews. They are kind of the point of posting chapters online._


	3. dEadward

Lunacy

Chapter Three

(d)E(a)dward

Edward was in Alaska.

_Plop_.

Edward was coming home.

These were the first words Alice Cullen said to me. She had a peculiar, pinched looked to her face, as if she was trying to solve a very difficult puzzle. The plop sound effect was graciously provided by the deer blood slathered all over me still when I first entered the house.

Alice was pulled from his concentrated look when she fully noticed me. Her face became a rictus of horror.

"Oh. My. God. _What_ were you wearing?"

I looked down. To be honest I wasn't completely sure anymore. "It… appears to be jeans. And possibly the remains of my favorite t-shirt."

I frowned. I'd gone all the way to Virginia, to Mag-Con to get my Aperture shirt, and it hadn't been cheap. Damn it. Who knew deer could be such vicious little buggers? Then again, 'hadn't been cheap' usually meant more than twenty dollars when it came to shirts. Alice appeared to be wearing those super expensive shoes with the red soles – shoes that probably cost more than Charlie's house. Clearly money wasn't an issue with these folks.

. . . .

"Charlie!" how could I have forgotten about my own father?

Alice winced. "About that. You… can't really see him again. We have one real rule, and that is to stay hidden. Seeing your Dad now would put him in danger – you're a newborn –" her eyes drifted over to the long crack in the door I'd opened. " and you're not yet under control. And well, you look very different from how you did."

Logic. Damn it. I loved my dad. I missed him already even. He had been alone far too much the past few years, and now he probably thought I was murdered. Which brought something else to mind.

"What state are we in now? It doesn't look like forks."

"Vancouver. Well. Near Vancouver anyway. We're somewhere in Canada. We couldn't say in forks, not with Edward being so…" she broke off, lips pursed.

"Stupid?" I offered dryly. At this point in time I had no love for the idiot. He hadn't even tried to be subtle with the way he'd stared at me all day at school. And then there was the whole 'stalk-and-almost-kill-home-wrecker' incident.

Alice quirked a strained smile. Then her eyes suddenly widened and she laughed.

"What?" she was confusing already, but the first person I'd had a real conversation with aside from Carlisle, who'd had the honor of teaching me to hunt. Jasper offered his help for the next time, so he seemed nice enough.

"Oh nothing. I just saw something… interesting."

Her eyes flashed with amusement and she skipped off into the house, leaving me alone, and abruptly self conscious with my tatted blood bespattered state. I needed to get clean. It didn't seem as if my 'thing' about hygiene had gotten any less pressing with my new life.

I was considering jumping in the river… creek… body of water in the back to clean off when Alice returned and led me to a huge bathroom.

"We can't have you splashing around outside like a savage Bella."

She sounded amused. She'd probably had a vision of me doing just that. Speaking of visions, my brain made a random jump and I thought of Rosalie.

"Where's your sister?"

"Our sister – that is if you want to be part of the family~" Alice trilled.

I considered it, and Alice hugged me tightly as soon as I came to a decision. "Oh we'll be fantastic friends! The dynamic duo!"

I laughed and hugged back. I really did like Alice. "So, Rosalie?"

Alice grinned again. "She's rather pissed at our dear brother and is waiting for him to show up so she can tear him a new one." She rolled her eyes. "Not that I don't understand the seriousness of him turning you, but he's such a drama queen sometimes."

I snorted. "Yeah, I can see that." I, of course, had a few more colorful words in my head reserved from the poofy haired ass who'd been too much of a coward to stick around and deal with me. Ha. To be honest I really didn't have any idea how to react to him, and was glad that Rosalie was waiting outside to be violently angry at him for me.

Anyway, I wasn't going to insult Alice's 'brother' in front of her.

Once she'd left though, and I found my way into the shower I started muttering curse words to myself to alleviate the growing pressure of rage coiling under my skin. Mother of Fuck was my favorite phrase. I couldn't help but continue thinking about everything I'd left behind. The opportunity at having new friends, and a my father and the wonderful relationship that might've grown from the seeds I'd seen. And then there was my mother, and any normal human experience I may have wanted.

God! What about love? I've never really thought about myself in sexual terms, or been particularly interested in dating, but man alive how was I ever going to find love in the vastly shrunk pool of opportunity?

It would have to be another vampire, because lord knows I didn't want to rip someone else out of their life and drop them into this.

Not that being a vampire was horrific! I was immortal (though that opened up a whole new terrifying can of worms – what happened when the world ended? Or the sun died? Cold a vampire be killed if earth was sucked in a black hole? Would we all just float through the vastness of space for all eternity, sentient, starving and slowly going crazy?), I was prettier and apparently I may or may not have more than the standard vampire powers.

Anyway, at the moment I just wanted to complain. I think I deserve a day or too to whine to myself before bucking up and getting on with my life.

Hell, at least this way I'd be able to read everything I wanted. And see remakes of my favorite movies ( wonder if they'll do lord of the rings again?) and see all the cool stuff of the future! Ugh, lets just hope the future doesn't go all 1984 or Hunger Games on me. That would suck. But then, the vamps could have their own society.

I lost myself in a pleasant apocalypse day dream as I smoothed away the blood from my skin. It wasn't until I heard a huge crash and a mess of snarling from outside that I pulled myself out of it and snagged the clothes Alice had left for me by the door. I dressed in a flash and found myself beside my new… family as Rosalie, the lovely blonde from earlier, turned into a snarling demon like out of 30 days of night.

Oh, and she still managed to look mesmerizing. Damn.

Said mesmerizing vampire was on top of the poufy haired ass who'd attacked me. She had him by the throat, and there was a filigree of cracks spreading over his Leonardo Dicaprio cheekbones. I had very little sympathy for him, but didn't want Rosalie to murder her brother on my account. I barely knew these people and I didn't want to be a focal point of resentment and grief because I really didn't want to leave. I was already attached to them.

So I stepped between them when Edward managed to struggle free, and to my surprise, managed to hold them apart.

"Wow, Carlisle wasn't kidding about the newborn strength thing. No matter how totally implausible it is."


End file.
